Financial Empowerment Center Services

The vendor is required to provide from community organizations (nonprofit provider) to co-manage and implement its financial empowerment center (FEC).
- The FEC model provides free, professional, one-on-one financial counseling and coaching to residents. with support from the cities for financial empowerment (CFE) fund, and various funders, the city launched its FEC in the spring of 2020 as a key public service to support financially vulnerable residents.
a. Organizational capability
• Provide a description of the organization, including its mission.
• Provide a narrative of the overall organizational capacity, including any recent growth or contractions, and changes in strategic directions in recent years.
• Explain how the applicant has the organizational capability to perform the administrative and programmatic responsibilities related to the delivery of the proposed services; the increased level of supervision and management activity required to ensure that benchmarks and core service outcomes set forth in this RFP are achieved.
• Describe the role that senior manager will play in the development, implementation and oversight of the project.
• Explain how this contract would extend the capacity of your existing efforts in the arena of financial empowerment.
• Highlight any experience with data tracking and reporting to government agencies and/or private
funders.
• Describe applicant’s approach to human resources management, including hiring, supervision and professional development. provide turnover rate, explain how it is calculated, and describe approach to reducing turnover.
• Detail experience managing financial or other counselor and coaches
• Submit a copy of applicant’s most recent IRS letter indicating the applicant’s tax-exempt status.
if the applicant does not have 501(c)(3) status, submit the IRS letter for the tax-exempt fiscal sponsor.
• Please describe the applicant’s space layout; particularly the availability of private client meeting space that will be required due to the confidential nature of financial counseling and coaching work.
• Submit applicant’s most recent annual report, if available.
b. financial capacity
• List all local, state and federal government contracts held by applicant at any time during the past three years, including the project name, contract name and number, contract purpose, total contract
amount, government contracting agency, and agency contact person.
• Provide financial statements, audited if available, showing statement of activities and financial position (balance sheet) for the most recent complete fiscal year and two years prior.
• provide the most recent IRS form 990.
• If the FEC will be part of the applicant’s larger strategy, describe that strategy’s other components, how the FEC will relate to them operationally, and how they are funded.
• If applicant intends to raise additional funds to expand the FEC beyond the level of city funding, list other potential funders and explain how the expansion will operate.
• If any other funder requires different deliverables or tracks different outcomes, explain how the applicant will manage blended operations and reporting.
• If financial counseling and coaching is an entirely new undertaking for the applicant, describe start-up costs and how they are included in the budget. if the FEC is an expansion of related work already
underway by the applicant, explain how resources will be shared by or reassigned to the fec.
• If applicant intends to subcontract any FEC operations, describe subcontracting plans in detail.
• Attach a chart and explanation showing where and how the proposed services will fit into the applicant’s organization.
c. Proposed approach
• Program manager: Name of the program manager who will oversee the FEC team, including a resume and brief bio.
• delivery of service: provide a detailed plan on how the organization will meet the city FEC.
• Be as detailed as possible with regard to operational issues and specifically address the following:
1. Explain the organization’s approach to counseling/coaching with a particular emphasis on describing the client experience. this may include a detailed description of a typical client session, relevant materials used during sessions, and any additional information that will fully explain the applicant’s plans for achieving client outcomes.
2. Describe applicant’s staffing recruitment plan for a program manager and financial counselor and coaches.
3. Affirm that the applicant will collect, manage and track data using the CFE fund’s national FEC data system, a proprietary salesforce-based application.
4. Indicate the key tasks and key milestones associated with start-up and implementation, specifically activities leading up to the start of service provision.
• Coordination with other services: identify the possible approaches to forge programmatic partnerships with city agencies and community organizations and leaders. in addition, please detail initial thoughts on ways to monitor and assess the viability of these partnerships.
• External referrals: detail plans for referrals from the FEC to other supportive services
• Subcontractors: if subcontractors are proposed, describe in detail on each one will be trained, how the quality of the service will be assessed and ways in which oversight will be conducted.
• Marketing and outreach: detail existing organizational communications opportunities to promote the FEC and any other outreach opportunities.
d. Market assessment
• Provide a brief description of any suggested community/communities or target population(s) to be served through the proposed financial empowerment center.
• Articulate the justification for doing so, including the key programmatic and/or financial challenges.
• List and provide a brief description of any suggested locations where the FEC counselor and coaches can be housed.
e. Proposed pricing
• Provide a detailed budget and an accompanying budget narrative for the program.
• The city anticipates that the expected $450,000 award will cover 90 percent of program implementation, with the nonprofit provider covering the remaining 10 percent ($50,000).
• However, applicants should make realistic proposals based on the estimated budget.
• If applicable, applicants should include a list of any additional anticipated sources of income, actual and prospective, with amounts and line items to be covered by those supplements.
1. Direct personnel expenses
2. Personnel fringe expenses
3. Other than personnel services (OTPS)
4. Expenses (credit report/scores, training, software, etc.) administrative expenses (supplies,
equipment, rent, etc.)
5. Indirect costs
6. Current expense budget anticipated for the project, or currently used on similar projects.
7. List each staff line separately and include percent of time anticipated for this project or currently spent on a similar project.
8. Organizational budget for the current fiscal year.
- Budget:
• We currently estimate that the year 1 nonprofit provider contract will be between $450,000.
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: March 21, 2025